Research Global health economics

About

We are active in international health systems research and in particular in health benefit package design, informed by health technology assessment (HTA). In this, our group supports Ministries of Health in a range of low, middle and high income countries.


Research group leader

dr. Rob Baltussen

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Aims

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Aims

We support decision-makers in countries around the world in the development and implementation of legitimate processes for health policy making, in particular for health benefit package design and revision.

Health benefit package design is an intrinsically complex and value-laden process, in which multiple criteria beyond cost-effectiveness are important. Stakeholders often justifiably disagree about the relative importance of these criteria. Yet, present theory and methods for priority setting do not reflect this, and are typically technocratic in nature. This risks to undermine the legitimacy of decisions. 

We consider legitimacy, or perceived reasonableness of decisions, as the key challenge of priority setting in the coming decades. HTA organizations need to maneuver between the rapid development of new technologies and ever-expanding pressures on health budgets on the one hand, and strong stakeholder voices demanding access to these technologies on the other hand. HTA organizations are increasingly scrutinized on how they make decisions, including their processes and the evidence used.

We have developed evidence-informed deliberative processes (EDPs) for HTA-related organizations to improve the legitimacy of their benefit package design. We now support Ministries of Health in some 10 countries on the implementation of HTA and/or health benefit packages revisions following the principles of EDPs.

Read more on EDPs and see how we implement them in other countries.



Publications

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Publications



Internationally we are also known as

Global health priorities.